UG and Ballast Nedam sign contract for construction of the Feringa Building

Jan de Jeu is delighted that the construction will soon start: ‘With this new building, we are going to create excellent research facilities for our top academics and students. This is important in order to remain globally prominent. Ballast Nedam has the expertise and experience to construct the biggest UG building project ever’.

‘We are very pleased that we will be able to add the Feringa Building to our order portfolio,’ says Cenk Düzyol. ‘With our expertise in state-of-the-art research facilities, we are convinced that we will complete this project satisfactorily.'

Home to Nobel Prize Winners

The building is named after Professor Ben Feringa, who conducts his Nobel Prize-winning chemical research at the Faculty of Science and Engineering (and in the current Nijenborgh 4), and where Professor Dr Frits Zernike also won his Nobel Prize in Physics (1953). With the Feringa Buiding 'home to Nobel Prize winners', the RUG underlines its ambitions to continue contributing to important international research areas such as chemical engineering, (nano) technology, material research and astronomy.

Classrooms, clean rooms, labs and installations

The Feringa Building will become the third new building for the Faculty of Science and Engineering. The building will contain of three connected V-shaped wings and will provide room for around 1,400 students and 850 employees. Alongside offices and lecture theatres, the building will also contain a wide range of special laboratories, such as physics, biochemical and anti-vibration labs.

Feringa Building facts & figures

• 64,000 m2 gross floor area
• 260 metres long, 63 metres wide, five floors
• lecture hall with 420 seats
• restaurant with 250 seats
• three kilometres of laboratory tables
• 450 fume cupboards
• 30 laser labs
• 900 m2 of solar panels
• gas-free

Construction area

The construction will proceed in phases. Over the past few months, the area at the Zernike Campus has been prepared for construction and the first phase will start next summer. In order to be able moove into the building at an earlier stage, the first phase (1a) will be completed (in mid-2021), so that the first research groups of the Faculty can take up residence in the Feringa Building. After phase 1a, the sections 17 and 18 of Nijenborgh 4 will be demolished to make space for phase 2. This will start at the beginning of 2022, to be completed in the summer of 2023.